


The Hero Type

by love_in_the_stars



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Tony Has Deep Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love_in_the_stars/pseuds/love_in_the_stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He believed in heroes. /Major spoilers for the movie.\</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hero Type

**Author's Note:**

> Just a thoughtful drabble-like thing based on what I imagine some of Tony's thoughts might have been before Steve approached him.

_He believed in heroes._   
  
Tony stared into the black hole where Loki’s prison had once been. His mind was stuck on an unforgiving loop, reviewing every interaction with Phil Coulson Tony had ever had in perfect clarity. It was as if he had his halo-screen up in front of him and was playing them like film scenes.   
  
He’d liked Coulson, mainly for the man’s dry wit and how rarely he let Tony have the last word. For an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, who Tony did absolutely hate, Coulson was a good man. A good man who believed in heroes and who died like one.   
  
Tony didn’t believe in heroes. Once, as a child, he’d believed in Captain America. He’d listened to his father’s stories and let his impressive imagination run but eventually he’d outgrown those stories, even resented them a slight bit. Howard spoke better and more often of a dead man then his own son, who wouldn’t develop some issues from that? But it was fine, resentment or not, Tony had always acknowledged Captain America as a true blue hero, the best of the best. Then he met Steve Rogers and what do you know, the man was a dick. Still a hero, sure, he could admit that but also a judgemental ass.   
  
(And if the Captain’s words kept repeating themselves in his head like a broken record, well, that was no one’s problem but his own.)   
  
Coulson had been duly impressed by the good Captain and flustered in a way Tony had never seen him or even thought him capable of being.   
  
It never occurred to Tony that Coulson had been one of the men behind the Avengers Initiative but in hindsight it should have. Coulson was the one who helped him(handled, more like) before being replaced with Natasha so he could take care of the Asgard business in Mexico. Tony read the reports last night, got caught up on everything and it hadn’t escaped his notice that Coulson’s name was on most of them but he also hadn’t connected the dots. Not until Fury just mentioned it all in one conversation designed to goad them into battle.   
  
Tony was a genius billionaire, he was slick in engineering and business for a reason and he recognized a pitch when he heard one. Fury was playing up their emotions on the loss of a good man to rally them into acting more like a team. It would work, of course, because the world did need to be saved from a maniac with magic powers and they would want to avenge Coulson. He understood and Tony had already decided to go along with it for those reasons. He wasn’t fooled by the hero talk but take that out of the equation and the end result didn’t change.   
  
Captain America might need to be spurred on by talk of heroes but Tony didn’t because he wasn’t one, not even close. He had what it took to be a fighter, an Avenger, but not a hero and that was fine. He wasn’t a soldier or an agent or a god, he was just a genius inventor with more money than anyone else and the means to fight back. And fight back he will, they all will and they will save this world or die trying to avenge it and those were the only options.   
  
Tony looked up at almost noiseless approach of Captain America and saw his own conviction reflected in those blue eyes. Hero or not, this fight was personal and they would win. Anything else was unacceptable.


End file.
